Day 5: Cartagena

Or “We Are Victorious At Last” (more later!)

Cartagena is a beautiful city on the Caribbean side of Colombia (the only South American country to have coasts on both the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean). It’s history dates back to Christopher Columbus’s first voyage in 1492 and was claimed by Spain as a region rich in gold and emeralds (my kind of town!) Once again Chris didn’t understand just how far east he had come (or rather hadn’t come) and so technically the name of this city is Cartagena de India.

The public education system here is really excellent and it is free (or in the case of the university nearly free, $75/6 months) as long as you have good grades (now there‘s an incentive we might want to try in the states!). If you can’t make the grade there are always private schools, many taught only in English by young teachers from America. Spanish is the native language, however, English is compulsory from kindergarten through college. If at the end of your college studies you cannot pass the English exam, then you simply do not receive a degree. (Of course if you can’t pass the exam after 17 years of study, I’m not sure you deserve a degree!)

Cartagena is divided into several sections which we visited: the Monastery, the old city, the new city and the fortress. While there is a certain affluence apparent in the mansions of the most wealthy (very small by comparison to those found in the Seattle area certainly), there is also abject poverty evident. On the winding road to the monastery, we found tiny “houses” constructed of corrugated sheet metal or bricks. Some had doors and windows still present and the lucky ones had doors that shut. Women sat in the doorway or in front of the house holding babies, trying to keep the small children from running in front of the frequent buses. Not very many people own or drive their own cars because Colombia exports nearly all its oil elsewhere and then buys it back for its own use (what kind of deal is that?). Our guide told us that gas is expensive - $3.00 US for a Canadian gallon (I don’t’ even know what a Canadian gallon is - do they actually use that? Given the number of Canadians traveling with us, I thought it best not to show my ignorance by asking!) Though employment seems to be available to those who want the work, the primary source of income in the areas we visited was achieved by the residents dressing in costume and shaking down the tourists for a buck or two for a photo op.

Our tour of Cartagena began at the pier in one of dozens of 25-30 passenger buses. Each passenger received a small receiver and the guide used a transmitter to keep track of his group. There was only one cruise ship in town that day and I can’t even imagine what it would have been like with a couple of more! Our first stop was the La Popa Monastery at the top of the hill overlooking Cartagena. It just celebrated its 400th anniversary last year. We became accustomed to being accosted at each stop by peddlers and their wares - some didn’t even wait for the bus to come to a complete stop (tapping on the windows and holding up the merchandise as we slowed down!)

From there we headed to the fortress. Here the commander would live in the “bonnet” while the soldiers would live across the bridge in what is now the old town (also fortified with a 14 ft. wall). If there was need, bells would sound summoning the soldiers to protect the fortress. There was a secret passage way throughout the fortress. Should the rather tall English find it, they would be forced to bend down to pass through. The soldiers would be lying in wait in the dark (though now accustomed to the darkness) and, so as not to alarm the English with the noise of gunfire, they would attack and kill them with knives. No wonder Cartagena did not fall to the British.

Then it was onto the old town of Cartagena and the handicraft stores. On the perimeter of this area is the old bull fighting ring. There are two “seasons” for bullfighting: December/January and June/July but it turns out that not even the Cartagenans care too much for it so they closed down the old ring and the new ring shares it facility with the soccer and baseball teams!

Our final stop was in the new city at their “shopping mall” - a one block affair with a number of stores (upstairs and down) mostly focused on getting you to make an emerald purchase. As with most cruise ports of call, the majority of these fabulous “jewelry” stores are wholly owned by the cruise lines and while I don’t think they are going to rip you off completely with some sort of “bait and switch” deal, if they are discounting the merchandise while you are standing there in the same sort of fashion as those hawking t-shirts and leather goods on the streets in front of the store, I can’t imagine that you are really going to “score” a gem of great worth here. It was interesting though, for me, to see all those beautiful green emeralds!

By far the best part of our tour was…the traffic! I was totally mesmerized by watching our bus driver navigate his way around Cartagena. The larger roads in Cartagena will accommodate two buses across. On some of the newer paved roads you will find the dashed white lines which appear to be a suggestion of how one might divide the road into two lanes. As near as I can tell, all, REPEAT ALL, roads in Cartagena are one-way, if you are brave enough! Someone not going fast enough in front of you? No problem - just pull over to the left and pass them. Our driver didn’t even check or hesitate - EVEN IF THERE WAS A CAR COMING AGAINST US! Clearly there was a well-defined “pecking order” in place: the larger your vehicle, the more likely you were to have your own way. There were lots and lots of buses similar in size to ours - both public and private/tour buses. Then there were the small yellow cars (taxis) swarming like bees everywhere and they tried to steer clear of the buses. Once the buses and cars had claimed their space, all remaining roadway was filled in with the motorcycles. I’m not talking about those little scooters like we found in Italy. No, these are actually small motorcycles that were often found “white lining” it between the larger vehicles and filling in every other available space.

The final class of road traveler was the pedestrian. Unlike in the states where we are taught that “the pedestrian always has the right-of-way,” here in Cartagena the pedestrian has no “right-of-way.” I think there only purpose is extra points because our bus driver didn’t even flinch, let alone slow down, whenever someone stepped out in front of us. If the pedestrian was lucky, the driver might sound the horn a few times, but since horns were sounded all the time, I doubt that anyone walking would recognize this as a sign of impending danger. Bicycles seem to be just considered a fast form of walking and given the same respect (or lack thereof) as pedestrians.
And yet all this being said, there appeared to be few accidents and the cars and buses did not show the wear and tear and overall denting I would have imagined!

Back on board at 1:30 we were able to actually leave port a little ahead of schedule because for the first time I can recall, all passengers came back early (I think the heat played a major role in that factor! I don’t think I really could acclimate to this climate - nearly 90 with 100% humidity which meant that we could skip most of the steam rooms that afternoon!) We met up with our trivia teammates to once again suffer defeat although we did claim a bit of satisfaction in that we got the privilege of grading the winning team’s answers (next time I check to make sure there isn’t a MENSA convention on board!)

I convinced Gerry to come down and try our hands at “The Princess Pyramid” - works similar to the TV game show and it was too late to back out by the time he realized that each time was required to take their turn up on stage. We had new partners here (Phil & Linda from Port Orchard) and it wasn’t surprising to me that we would kick some trivia butt here! There is a definite upgrade in the prizes here and we now have two new tote bags to help us get our stuff home! Whoo hoo! We met up again with Phil & Linda and their friend for “The Jeopardized Trivia” game at night (Princess can’t use the exact copyrighted names of the games) and we came ever so close to winning another tote bag there.

Terri’s Travel Tip: Always agree to share your table at mealtimes. That way you’ll get to meet lots of people (veteran or rookie cruisers, those from abroad, etc.) This is the best way to learn about the “population” of your ship. If, as in our case this time, you have traveling with an high percentage of Canadians, I can guarantee you that any answer involving geography that you don’t absolutely know to be otherwise, the answer will be CANADA (learned that one the hard way!)

Tomorrow we transit the Panama Canal. We have a 5 am slot assigned to our ship so it will be an early morning!

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